


and it feels like yesterday was a year ago

by starconsequence



Category: Promare (2019)
Genre: Character Study, POV Second Person, Some coarse language, Trans Character, Trans Galo Thymos, Trans Lio Fotia, Trans Male Character, lio-centric, minor mentions of other charas in chapter one, some graphic content - brief mentions of death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-25 06:20:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21871456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starconsequence/pseuds/starconsequence
Summary: It is early April. The flowers are starting to bloom among small leaves, snow is almost a memory and you clutch your raincoat around you as you splash through puddles in stolen moments.Childhood is uneasy, and you cling to the memories of who you were. You rewrite yourself in the fire.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 19





	1. if i could change

**Author's Note:**

> title from billie eilish's everything i wanted
> 
> hello new fandom, i'm here and i'm here to provide some Good Food.

You are two years old when your mother moves with you to America. You can hazily remember her hand clutching yours, burying her face into your tiny body. Her hair is straw-coloured, and you can remember running your chubby fingers through it. There are few belongings to your name.

You are four years old when she finds a rich man that takes you both in, and is quick to spoil you as if you are his own child. There are hushed murmurs of his staff, talking about how the last wife was carted away because she was crazy, burning away with strange flares. It wasn't long after the Great World Blaze, either. _Burnish,_ they spoke, though the word speaks to something lingering in the back of your mind.

You are four and a half years old when your step-father comes home blithering drunk. The screaming starts, almost nightly. It goes on for weeks but then suddenly ends. The reason why it started is unknown, but it's alright. You start attending etiquette schools, and you keep to yourself among the rich kids from birth.

On your fifth birthday, you are given a good celebration, the cake is delicious and you make yourself sick, but a strange feeling starts setting in – you're _certain_ you're a boy, and you weren't always like that. Soft skirts are fought against, to the dismay of your nanny. You quiet when you can wear pants and shorts, and it's brushed off as nothing too terrible. Your name starts to sting, but you can ignore the burn.

As you age up to seven, something seems _wrong_ in your limbs – it's not the strange pulling in your body, wanting the rough boyhood that the boys at school have. It's not proper for a girl to want to rough-house and tumble in the dirt, covered in scratches and bruises. Hard-earned playtime with skinned knees. So you keep the irritation to yourself, you read books under the trees. Voracious, your teachers call you, and you simply sink yourself into schoolwork and your free time into books. You lie to yourself that everything is okay.

It is early April. The flowers are starting to bloom among small leaves, snow is almost a memory and you clutch your raincoat around you as you splash through puddles in stolen moments. Your long hair is pulled up into the hat, pale green-white strands slipping out. You're left alone outside. The screaming has stirred up again, and it's been a constant daily occurrence. Some of your fellow classmates have been taken out of class, the word of _Burnish_ slipping back into day-to-day life. Your mother has no issue with them. They are people trying to live their lives, just with the added challenge of being humans made of fire.

Life is mundane, you grow into a 'fine young lady' as your step-father says. You speak once of your distaste of it, that you are _not_ a lady and instead a young strapping lad. Everything you say is what you hear the mothers and fathers and teachers of the boys in your class say. You feel jealous, you don't want to be the polite girl, silent in her place. You fight the dresses and the skirts and the jewellery. You wear it anyway, when your step-father glares and puts you in your place with only a few sharp words. Smoke chokes you for the first time that night.

Your mother smiles, calling you her little man once, knowing that her husband is incredibly displeased by it. It is your secret, and your mother learns how to plait your long hair back in a way that makes you happy to look at your reflection. Glee chokes you instead of the growing hatred for yourself that you didn't realize was there. It is nice. Any happiness dies that evening, hearing that it is you _he_ screams about, accusing your mother of corrupting your innocence. You keep any wish to be a boy to yourself and cry yourself to sleep among damp pillows.

Something flickers in you as you grow, unchecked. When you get angry, you spit ash and taste smoke, and you feel like it's the end of the world – that you'll burn up in flame. You want to. It'll leave nothing behind, and for a period of time your books you read are about morbid topics. They aren't fit for a ten year old, but you _live_ for it. It's all you can do to read. Going up in flames is reassuring – there will be almost nothing left. You don't realize anything else could be at play now. It's hard to grow up to face the truths your body has for you.

You are eleven when you hear the house staff speak about the Mad Burnish – how they've terrorized cities and towns, burning down what they want. You ignore it, but you can't ignore the unsettling chill in your bones when you hear the newscasts your step-father listens to with a sick smirk on his face. He speaks highly of the Foresight Foundation. The founder, Kray Foresight has been praised for his rescue of a child your age – someone named Galo Thymos. His face looks like yours – soft and rounder than any of the boys. But he's very clearly a boy, from the very way he's dressed, and you're so, so _jealous_ of him. You forget of Galo Thymos in time, like the rest of the world. He's forgotten in Kray Foresight's world, using his name to step to fame.

It is late April, you are twelve, when you catch the scent of smoke in your home – and it is not the fire going in the living room. It's paired with the scent of copper, harsh and _foul_. Your step-father is screaming, but his voice is different – pained. There is no anger, only begging and tears. It's a sound that will live with you for the rest of your days. Your body tells you to run, and you're caught frozen until you go to investigate it. Your mother's hands are surrounded by bright flames. They are alien, bright neon pink and cyan. Her eyes leak the same kind of flames, crying and spitting the fire. You and she are both frozen until her head tilts down to look at the charred remains on the kitchen floor. Neither of you speak, but you _understand_.

It is mid June, and you and your mother have made excuses for his disapearance – the police open an investigation and find nothing. Your mother smiles, showing you how she's gaining control of her new powers, making you black things that glisten like glass. You find a name for yourself, and your mother is so, _so_ happy to call you her son. For the first time in years, you feel so much lighter. You have to move though, you can't afford the same kind of lifestyle, and remarrying again would raise too many questions about your mother's new status. The Burnish have started to be rounded up by the authorities, and it makes your blood run cold. You have a sneaking suspicion to what will happen to you as you almost daily choke on coals.

The worst comes, and your mother pulls you from your bed, giving you a backpack stuffed with the things you and her will need. She chops your hair off, messy and short – boyish and you _love_ it. Your clothing is protective, and she gathers you up in her arms. You don't know how Miss Fotia can gather it up – she's always looked so weak, and you aren't exactly _light_. You are thirteen, after all. She carries you from the house, a scared light in her eyes. You go into hiding.

It is a month before the stress is finally what makes you catch fire, spitting and seeing stars. The blaze is strong, surging forth and dooming you. Neither you or your mother can return to the life you had. You are reborn in a pyre of your own making – Lio Fotia. It is a name you murmur, and it's all you will be called by. Your mother leads you on, and you start meeting more Burnish on the run. You forge a quiet community along a quiet section of the Canada and American border. You meet many people from all walks of life, and it's an overwhelming amount that are like you, or like those of the same gender, or all. Or none. It's scary, and you see so many that you want to do something.

You are fifteen when the community thins drastically – there are technologies that finally came into play, terrorizing the Burnish communities at large. They were there previously too, but often their results were tests, the mice in labs being the same humans that made up the home you dwell in. Many casualties happened until they were finally perfected. Your mother goes missing, and you can't do anything about her. The only thing you _can_ do is sharpen your fangs and claws and go to war against the Foresight Foundation. You give into the fire's will to burn and _burn_ and _**burn**_. You will not compromise on killing. You will never kill without great need or a great terrible cause.

You hear about the Mad Burnish in the camps and little towns you move through, a reverance in their voices. There is no fear in their voices, unlike how you heard about Mad Burnish before you burned too. Freeze Force is now a division that speaks to a new city's mayor directly. Your gut twists as you start hearing the horror stories of what Kray Foresight is capable of. You start going to war on your own terms, honing the skills you will carry into the future.

You are twenty one and a half when you finally meet Mad Burnish. You intercept their fight with those chasing them. It's chaotic indeed, and you are quick to overtake their opponents with ease, and yet there are no casualties where you are involved. Your head is held high as you introduce yourself. The leaders introduce themselves to you, and are quick to call you Boss.

Everyone is so skinny, and you do your best to feed everyone, but honestly you live off the constant rebuild and replenishing of your body by the fire's teeth. You go hungry _often_. You feel guilty when you crack open a can of something to put in your stomach, knowing others are going hungry, but it's the best you can do. It goes on for months, and you stay back, keeping your small communities running, a member of the Mad Burnish. You burn when you can, steal and take what you do. You always leave enough for others and a way out.

It's been a wild handful of months, and you finally get news on where the Burnish are kept, and you steel your resolves with Meis and Gueira and you _plan_. You plan on hitting pharmacies in Promepolis – a place you _hate_ because Kray Foresight is behind its foundation, but it's also a place where Burnish live under the radar. You know Burning Rescue is fair, but you plan on Freeze Force to also catch wind of your plans. You wait for the right time, and it just so happens you turn twenty two days before hand. You don't say anything, no one knows your age aside from the fact you quietly say you're in your early twenties when prompted.

You are twenty two when you meet Galo Thymos, and his dumb luck and charisma are quick to take out everyone, even easier than you all had made it. You do admit he put up a good fight, and you weren't going to go down easily, but in the end you do, and a part of your mind is ten years younger, feeling a strange kind of way. Galo Thymos – the kid Kray Foresight rescued. You can only hope Galo is wise enough to catch what is going on, either that he will burn up in his naivety.

Your mind goes blank as Vulcan's slimy jaws snap shut around your dimly lit future, but you can only begin to future fan the spark you lead into tommorow.


	2. and i don't want to let them down

The room everyone is held in is _freezing._ There is no if-ands-or-buts about it. It's freezing and none of you can get warm and the cold gets into your bones. Your breath fogs in front of you, and you know from Gueira's brief rage that the locks around your hands will freeze any flames trying to spark in them. They probably only do it a few times before they break, and you can only start to think on how quickly you'd need to push your flames hotter and hotter to bust out of them. But it's probably easy for you.

As you predicted, it _is_. _They_ come for the three of you, probably to transfer you to some sick lab where you'll be strapped to a table and _dissected_ like some lab rat – shoved into tests again and again until there's nothing of you but ash flaking in the wind. There's nothing left of you then, and you're determined to make your legacy hard and _heard_. You aren't going to go down easily to the Foundation, and your generals are at your side, smiles wicked and wild.

And you love them for it. They are your family now, in a way. Where you've sought after your mother, you cannot find her end, and as much as it _hurts_ , you have a family so much wider now. It encompasses all the Burnish that will have you.

You pace in silence, surrounded by armed guards, but it is enough for you to steel your resolve again, softly catching Gueira and Meis's attention and you close your eyes to focus. Your hands burn-and-freeze in quick succession before they're overwhelmed. The freezing cuffs click off, your guards catching wind of what's happening. A grin flickers to burn on your lips as you announce the freedom of your kin, and the world whirls into bright colours, breaking off your cohorts' restraints before whipping off to cause as much mayhem as you can, busting as many of the Burnish from their frozen prisons.

Meis and Gueira gather them up in a stolen aircraft from the facilities there, and you watch as the door closes, taking off after them without any equipment yourself, your flames doing the work.

The fire is a life inside of you, murmuring information hosted by the other Burnish, secret-keepers to your own small stolen survival.

Is it fate, or is it coincidence to where you nestle a small group to watch over – Meis and Gueira take a majority of the others to the new settlement near the volcano, and you keep watch over a select few. A frozen lake is near, and it's peaceful for a bit.

You leave the group there for an hour or so while you fly to scrounge up some food. Something unsettling takes over you, the feeling like someone's watching the Burnish. A large opponent – but most people in Promepolis are in some way. They've got a gun drawn, and you're sure the ammo is cryonics based. You act first, ask questions later. The side of your hand hits _hard_ into the back of their neck.

It's Galo Thymos, and you kick his gun away from his unconscious body from where it clatters from his hand when he goes down. You drag him to a stalagmite (or is it stalactite?) and tie his hands together against it before moving the bag of groceries over to the other Burnish to start distributing cans to the children first before letting the adults pick over the rest. Again, you go hungry until everyone else gets some.

The fireman wakes within a few minutes, grunting and struggling for a second against the bonds before his form becomes taut when he catches sight of you. You share quipped words and burn his nose for your trouble.

Galo Thymos is rigid as a board but relaxes as he sort of figures out that you are both human, the Burnish _are_ human, and do not deserve the trials and pain they have been forced through – leaving them all bruised and tired and broken.

You've thankfully been spared, but the fire shares the pain between everyone in a way, and you've always been more connected to the flames since you burned into this new life. You know the phantom aches and pains more than others, even if your body has been healed beyond scarring – there's nothing physical left to tell where you've been hurt on your skin. Rips and tears in clothing are another issue, but it's easy to patch it up all the same.

Thyma's voice is raspy and low, and another Burnish pulls at your arm to grab your attention, and all you know is that her coals are dying out. She's at the end of her life, so quick to burn. Your head throbs with questions to _why_ she's left like this, and your hatred for the Foresight Foundation rears its violent head again and you run to your side.

Galo's proud voice rings out, demanding that he be allowed to look at her, and there's nothing regular medicine can do for her injuries anyways. Her body is healed and it's her _fire_ that's at it's end. When the flame flickers and dies, that's the end. She's ash. She's what happens to all Burnish. What will one day happen to you, and you've accepted that. It was one of the things you accepted early on, one of the things you accepted about your mother, and why you've never been able to find her.

You don't want to lose Thyma, but it's the only thing you can do to crouch beside her and press your lips so intimately to hers. It's lifesaving – you try. You've been able to breathe a part of your own fire into another Burnish to save them before, but you fear she's too far gone to save.

When her fire catches again, coals softly fanned back to burning embers and catching back to the kindling of her body, you straighten back up, relieved that she lives, and will continue to burn for the foreseeable future, and you want to keep her small flame sheltered for now. You pray she's one of the few that doesn't get caught again. You'd die trying to keep her going.

Galo inquires what would have happened if her breath hadn't bubbled back to coughing loudly in the hurried silence of the room, and you admit the truth, frantically almost. He flinches when the fire behind them roars to a brilliant burning, and you choke on the flames yourself. You live for their burn, and the pyre behind them burns the sins of those in the room.

Except for you. You still have past to burn. You will always have a past to burn.

His voice is sharp, and you'd think he was a Burnish from the hungry look in his eyes, glaring at those bandaged and just trying to _live_. He demands information, and you tip the heart-shattering news to the poor bastard that it's Kray Foresight and his damnable Foundation behind the suffering of your people. His horror is clear, and the expression burns into your mind.

Gueira and Meis come, and Meis scoops up Thyma's body. Everyone's led away, and you spare Galo one last look in the darkness as you leave him with the dying fire's light. You know one of his allies will find him, he will be safe. He doesn't seem like the person to lie down and accept death easily. He'd probably rather fight and break his way out of the rope, and you'd rather be far from here if that does come to pass.

You join the rest, climbing into the front seat of one of the trucks, sitting beside Gueira. He drives in silence, and you can hear the heated whispers of the Burnish in the back, drawing their stolen blankets tighter around them. You pray this is the start of their salvation. You're so tired, but you can't stop thinking about Galo.

Galo and the look on his face as you left him there, horror and uncertainty. You know Kray Foresight is his idol – it was clear on how he had defended Foresight when you snarled that he was the reason Thyma and everyone else was injured. You have no idea what his next move will be, but you know it will probably be a dumb-ass move.

Everything is... Decent. You manage, getting the people you want to thrive settled in a broken down ruin of highway. It's a hollow place filled with the careful hidden lives, and over the next week it blooms into something steadier.

Life is good for the first time in ages. The threat is not over, though. Foresight's goons are still out there, hunting like savage dogs – but it's peaceful for now. Mad Burnish lights fires to draw the beasts' attention away.

You stay with the others, a watchful presence. Gueira and Meis are there too, and you live in a domestic mockery, you _know_ something is on the horizon. The fire burning within you murmur unsettling things. Every flicker over your shoulder of the other Burnish's flames makes you think the worst is happening, but it's not.

It's an uneasy night for everyone, and you're all spared only a few hours before disaster strikes and it's horrifying to feel everything crumble around you. Everything you've _strived to do_ , putting your life on the line to get them here is stripped away by Vulcan Haestus and his fucking _goons_. You thought you were finally _free_.

The screams of your people echo in your ear as you put up the best final stand you can. The three of you loom the best you can in your armour. Vulcan sizes you all up, wicked sharp grin and trigger happy as he watches the Burnish you fight to protect are rounded up and collected. You feel sick as he calls them fuel.

The old man you felt passive about is behind you and you don't have time to react as his small, bony hand presses something against the abdomen of your armor and it _explodes_ in ice. You see stars as the cold spreads through the glassy obsidian of Burnish protection and sharp _pain_ blossoms through your chest as something tears through the initial detonation to bury in your chest.

Vulcan is quick to freeze the old man, sitting on his icy tomb as you spit sparks. Ice only serves to choke you further as he explains about the Absolute Zero Chain Freezing Bullet and your stomach clenches in frozen agony, your body fighting for every second, spitting venom and ash again and again as Vulcan gloats.

His face is against yours, and you've rightfully had enough of people doing that lately as a method of intimidation, but there's nothing your body can do against the ice fighting to extinguish your life. Fuel, Vulcan calls your people, and it's clear that you too are destined to become part of their plans. You put up a fight the best you can, when your arms are trapped at your sides. It's all you can do to survive, push past the fear freezing your heart just as fast.

Doom sinks in your gut, pulling you into despair as fast as you can _think._ Anger rages up, the last weapon you have left in your arsenal.

Meis and Gueira put up a good final stand, doing what they can to protect _you_ , sacrificing themselves in your place – two weaker cogs for the price of one. Their wall of flames is bright, blazing hard but it's nothing against Freeze Force. You demand they run, but they disobey your order, spinning a carbon cannon that blows you to the sacred volcano.

The landing is painful, your head bashing against stone. You can feel the eddies of heat from the magma, but it's out of reach of blue fingertips, shaking as the ice spikes from you more and more. It's not long until you're the heart of a block of ice even volcanic heat cannot melt. Your mind numbs, burying in the ever-crying voices of the fire.

You aren't yourself in a matter of minutes, and you're lost in the cries of your kin in – it doesn't feel like it, but it's _hours_. There's already a searing burn in the back of your mind from the pain the Burnish are suffering, and you're alone.

The magma's power rises, called to you to burn and _melt_ , evaporate into mere steam at the need for revenge, to bite and burn hotter and hotter and _stronger_ than you have before. The fury boiling in your bones ignites a rage you cannot stand to keep quiet any longer and it hits the melting point. Everything liquefies and _snaps._

It's not long before you're not _you_ , not properly – you're something else, the fire in you taking over and wiping your mind clean of every other thought that's not _rage_ and the blinding wrath of ending Kray _fucking_ Foresight.

A show of pure strength is enough for you to wrench the frozen shrapnel from your heart, body just _rejecting_ the foreign object that is the antithesis of your _existence_. You're absolutely burning, melting and exploding.

You're a being of nothing but hatred and rage – body blackened in a way that's not the armor, nothing there.

And so you spark an explosion, crying out for blood as you rage against the world – the undending oppression Foresight's hellish fist has crashed against the Burnish one last time, and you shalt extinguish _him_ in one final burst of fury and your fire will _finally_ be sated. The one and only kill you shall make as a Burnish, and you do not care about the repercussions.

Kray has had one too many chances to atone for every sin and atrocity he has caused. You are the judge, the jury, and the executioner, and Kray must pay for his sins.

You wail, burning through Promepolis in a hellfire of your own making.

The world is on fire around you, and finally there's a part of you that is tearing yourself apart and putting you back together in all the right ways. It's cathartic, the way you tear the world to paper shreds. The world will burn for what has happened to your kin.

The voice that booms from you is explosive, tearing with anger as you demand the release of your people and hold the salvation of Promepolis against Kray Foresight.

Freeze Force is there – ants upon a hill, mere insects to what your attention is held by. You simply _blink_ , and the eyelid of your draconic form snaps shut around Vulcan. You wish it had been enough to sear him clean in half, but you'll take him recoiling to lick burning wounds over nothing.

Climbing the tower of the Foresight Foundation is child's play to you, tearing their extinguishing defences apart without a sweat upon your brow.

And _he's_ there, the king piece on this chess board, and you are the pawn about to call checkmate. Fury is clear in his body, fist almost _sparking_. A smile is on his face, dark and leering into your soul. He cannot be given victory, and you are the one calling the shots here.

And you are robbed of his death – something slamming _hard_ into the side of your head, sending you flying further. Venom chokes you as you are made aware of _who_ it is – the fool who is all too eager to throw himself into death's path. You can easily kill him like this – his fragile form is mortal. There is no fire in him that calls to you, nothing you could use to pull anger from.

He's trying to help, burning himself on the core that surrounds you, his gloves sizzling and catching when they've hit their melting point. His voice is proud as he says it doesn't hurt – that his soul burns brighter. It only serves to make your fire grow, but the dragon is dispersed, and you are trapped in something with Galo Thymos, trading blows and words.

You pause, thrown off by him demanding that Burnish do not kill, and why would you turn back on that pride. It's enough to shake you and you next know the floor beneath your feet is gone, and you and Galo Thymos are sent falling towards the glass of a frozen lake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> merry crisis. ~~im hoping to finish this before 2020.~~
> 
> also, i was going to make it a two parter, but i needed another chapter for the rest of promare, and maybe another post movie chapter? who knows. i don't - i'm just sitting here throwing prose at a wall and praying something sticks.
> 
> edited: so i learned that lio was frozen in ice for a week, instead of the burnish being at the settlement for a week before they're found. added some other stuff and fixed that detail.


End file.
